receptive and productive vocabulary sizes of l2 learners

RECEPTIVE AND PRODUCTIVEVOCABULARY SIZES OF L2

LEARNERS

Stuart WebbVictoria University of Wellington

This study investigated the relationship between receptive and pro-ductive vocabulary size. The experimental design expanded uponearlier methodologies by using equivalent receptive and productivetest formats with different receptive and productive target words toprovide more accurate results. Translation tests were scored at twolevels of sensitivity to measure receptive and productive knowledgeof meaning and form. The results showed that total receptive vocab-ulary size was larger than productive vocabulary. When responseswere scored for fuller knowledge, receptive vocabulary size was alsofound to be greater than productive vocabulary size in each of threeword frequency bands, with the difference between receptive andproductive knowledge increasing as the frequency of the wordsdecreased. However, when responses were scored for partial knowl-edge, there was little difference among vocabulary sizes at each fre-quency band. The findings also indicated that receptive vocabularysize might give some indication of productive vocabulary size. Learn-ers who have a larger receptive vocabulary are likely to know moreof those words productively than learners who have a smaller recep-tive vocabulary.

Researchers and teachers have long been interested in measuring vocabularysize+ Knowing students’ receptive vocabulary size provides teachers with agauge as to whether those students will be able to comprehend a text or alistening task, whereas knowing their productive vocabulary size provides someindication as to the degree to which students will be able to speak or write+Research suggests that there are certain vocabulary thresholds that deter-mine whether learners will be able to successfully use or understand lan-guage+ For example, Nation ~2001! reported that receptive knowledge of the

Address correspondence to: Stuart Webb, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Linguisticsand Applied Language Studies, P+O+ Box 600,Wellington, New Zealand; e-mail: stuart+webb@vuw+ac+nz+

SSLA, 30, 79–95+ Printed in the United States of America+DOI: 10+10170S0272263108080042

© 2008 Cambridge University Press 0272-2631008 $15+00 79

2,000 most frequent word families allows participants to understand 90% ofthe words in spoken discourse+ Laufer ~1992! suggested that, at a minimum,having receptive knowledge of the most frequent 3,000 word families is nec-essary to understand unsimplified text, and Hirsh and Nation ~1992! sug-gested that knowing at least 5,000 word families is required for reading to beenjoyable+ Research has also been able to show the effects of instructionthrough measuring gains in receptive and productive vocabularies ~Laufer, 1998;Laufer & Paribakht, 1998!+ A number of studies have compared receptive andproductive vocabulary sizes ~Fan, 2000; Laufer; Laufer & Paribakht; Morgan& Oberdeck, 1930; Waring, 1997a!+ Although these studies have produced use-ful findings, the test formats may have been biased toward receptive vocabu-lary size, which brings the results into question+ The present study wasdesigned to provide a more accurate assessment of the relationship betweenreceptive and productive vocabularies+

Background

Morgan and Oberdeck ~1930! measured the second language ~L2! receptiveand productive vocabulary sizes of five classes of university students learn-ing German+ They found that the size of receptive vocabulary exceeded thatof productive vocabulary at five levels of word frequency+ The results suggestthat at lower levels, receptive knowledge increases faster than productiveknowledge, and at later levels, production develops faster than reception butnever to the point that it equals reception+ Although the study is importantbecause it was the first to examine the gap between receptive and productivevocabularies, one problem reduces the validity of the findings+ The receptivetest provided the possibility of scoring correctly through guessing, whereasthe productive test did not+ The receptive measure was a five-item multiple-choice test, and the productive test was a translation test+ Therefore, if sub-jects had no receptive knowledge of a target item, they still had a 20% chanceof scoring correctly on the multiple-choice test, whereas the translation testoffered virtually no chance of guessing correctly+

Four recent studies ~Fan, 2000; Laufer, 1998; Laufer & Paribakht, 1998; War-ing, 1997a! also found that receptive vocabulary was larger than productivevocabulary, supporting the earlier findings of Morgan and Oberdeck ~1930!+All four studies measured receptive and productive vocabulary sizes usingthe same tests and similar procedures+ Receptive knowledge was measuredusing the Vocabulary Levels Test ~Nation, 1990!, whereas productive knowl-edge was measured using the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test ~Laufer &Nation, 1999!+ Once again, however, the test formats were biased in favor ofreceptive knowledge, bringing the results into question+

The Vocabulary Levels Test is a matching test in which subjects must selectthe correct definition or synonym for three words from one of six options, asillustrated in ~1!+

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~1! Vocabulary Levels Test1+ arrange2+ develop _____ grow3+ lean _____ put in order4+ owe _____ like more than something else5+ prefer6+ seize

The Productive Vocabulary Levels Test is a cued recall test thatinvolves subjects completing a word in a sentence+ To limit the answers tothe target vocabulary, the first letters of the words are provided+ An exampleis given in ~2!+

~2! Productive Vocabulary Levels TestThere are a doz_____ eggs in the basket+Every working person must pay income t_____+The pirates buried the trea_____ on a desert island+

Scoring a correct response depends on whether the subject is able to recallthe target word and then spell it correctly+ However, this is not as simple as itsounds+ Waring ~1997a! and Laufer ~1998! scored responses differently withrespect to the grammatical form of the word ~tense! and the orthographic form+Both tests measure vocabulary knowledge at four different word frequencylevels ~2,000, 3,000, 5,000, and 10,000! as well as the university word list ~Xue& Nation, 1984!, which allows for a direct comparison between receptive andproductive knowledge at each level+

At first glance, the tests appear ideally suited to assessing the relationshipbetween receptive and productive knowledge+ However, there are four rea-sons why such a comparison might prove to be misleading+ First, the match-ing test allows the learner a chance to score correctly without any knowledge+There is a 17% chance that a subject will guess correctly on one responsewith no knowledge of any of the six choices, and the possibility of guessingcorrectly increases with knowledge of some of the words+ The ProductiveVocabulary Levels Test offers little or no chance to guess correctly+ If a sub-ject does not know the correct response based on the context, the only pos-sibility of guessing correctly is by producing a response based on the spellingof the first letters of the word, which is very unlikely+ Therefore, it is likelythat participants will both score higher and demonstrate greater receptiveknowledge on the matching test than on the productive test of cued recall+Second, the Vocabulary Levels Test involves knowledge of form and meaning,whereas the productive version might also depend on knowledge of grammat-ical functions ~depending on the method of scoring!+ Thus, the productive ver-sion is more demanding because it requires subjects to demonstrate moreaspects of knowledge than the receptive version+ Third, the receptive versionuses a recognition format, whereas the productive version uses a recall for-mat+ The difference in format—recalling an answer and recognizing which

Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Sizes 81

choice is correct—is unlikely to provide an accurate comparison+ Finally, someresearch suggests that tests that provide the first letters of the target item,such as the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test, might actually test receptiveknowledge+Morton ~1979! found that participants were able to recognize wordswhen one phoneme is inaudible+ Moreover, when a partially pronounced wordwas produced in context, participants were often unaware that it was not pro-duced completely+ This led Melka ~1997! to state that “it is, then, clear thatthe presence of partial information is often sufficient to recognize a word”~p+ 87!+ Morton’s findings suggest that a test of cued recall in which the targetword is partially presented could actually be a recognition test in which onlyproductive knowledge of orthography is demonstrated+ Because the recep-tive test provides a greater possibility of answering correctly without knowl-edge, and productive knowledge of orthography is not tested, the productivetest could thus be considered a stricter test of receptive knowledge+

The present study was carefully designed to investigate the relationshipbetween receptive and productive vocabulary sizes+ Receptive and produc-tive vocabulary sizes were measured with translation tests at three word fre-quency levels+ Translation tests might provide a more accurate measurementof receptive and productive vocabularies because they have an equivalent testformat+ Two versions of each test were created to ensure that there could notbe a learning effect from seeing the same target words in both the receptiveand productive tests, and responses were scored at two levels of sensitivity+

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following specific research questions guided the current study:

1+ Is receptive vocabulary size larger than productive vocabulary size?2+ How does the relationship between receptive and productive vocabulary sizes

change as the frequency of the target items changes?3+ Does the relationship between receptive and productive vocabulary sizes differ

for participants with different receptive vocabulary scores?

METHOD

Participants

The participants in this study were 83 native speakers of Japanese from threesecond-year English as a foreign language ~EFL! classes at a university in Japan+All of the participants had studied English for a minimum of 7 years+ Forty-eight of the students were English literature majors whose general EFL profi-ciency level varied from intermediate to advanced+ The other 37 participantswere majoring in commerce, and their general proficiency level was consid-ered to range from beginner to intermediate+

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Target Words

One hundred eighty target words were selected for this study ~see the Appen-dix!+ The target words, selected from the COBUILD dictionary, were chosen inrelation to two factors: frequency and overlap between first language ~L1! andL2 meanings+ The COBUILD dictionary provides frequency information basedon the Bank of English corpus, which contains over 200 million words+ Sixtytokens were taken from three frequency bands: The target words in word band1 were taken from among the 701st to 1,900th most frequent words, word band2 tokens fell within the 1,901st to 3,400th most frequent word range, and tokensin word band 3 came from among the 3,401st to 6,600th most frequent wordsin English+

The second factor given consideration when selecting the target words wasthe degree of overlap in L1 and L2 meanings+ Perhaps the greatest weaknesswith translation tests is that it is very difficult to ensure that even if the par-ticipants know the target words, they will write the target words+ Because mostwords are polysemous and different L1 meanings might link with different L2forms, it was important to choose target words that had a high degree of over-lap with one L1 meaning and vice versa+ If words that are semantically relatedwith the target word, such as synonyms, are written as responses, it is diffi-cult to ascertain whether the testee had knowledge of the target word+ Becauseof this, words with a large degree of overlap in meaning were selected as tar-get words+ Potential target words were tested in a pilot study with 16 Japa-nese EFL students who were at a similar level as the participants in this study+Target words that consistently elicited the L2 form or its matching L1 mean-ing were used in the study, whereas items that elicited varied responses wereeliminated+

Research Instruments

Two instruments—receptive and productive translation tests—were used tomeasure the participants’ vocabulary size at three word frequency levels+ Ateach level, the receptive and productive tests were presented together on onepage+ Each page had 60 questions ~30 receptive and 30 productive!, for a totalof 180 items ~90 receptive and 90 productive! on the test+

In the receptive test, the L2 forms of the target words cued responses ofthe L1 form+ For example, the participants were required to write the Japa-nese translations of bubble, gasoline, and bruise on a blank line next to eachprinted word+ All of the responses on the receptive tests were scored by aJapanese native speaker+ A second Japanese native speaker checked all of theresponses in which the target word was incorrect or misspelled+ Responseswere scored at two levels of sensitivity: sensitive and strict+ In the strict scor-ing system, a learner’s response was marked as correct if it demonstrated thatthe learner was able to recall the L1 meaning and it was spelled correctly+ In


the sensitive scoring system, responses that demonstrated L1 knowledge ofmeaning were marked as correct even if they were misspelled+ When the L1word was misspelled, both graders had to agree that the response demon-strated L1 knowledge of meaning for the target word+ Responses that demon-strated L1 knowledge of meaning but were in the wrong grammatical form weremarked as correct in both scoring systems+

For some items on the receptive tests ~1+2%!, participants responded withanother sense of a target word’s meaning; such responses were scored as cor-rect+ For example, the target meaning for the cue spring was , which refersto its most common meaning—spring, the season+ However, in several cases,participants responded with , which refers to a spring or spa+ Because all ofthe target words in the study were matched with their most common mean-ings, less common meanings for L2 target words were marked as correctbecause such responses suggested that participants had a greater strength ofknowledge than was being measured+

In the productive test, the participants were given L1 meanings and askedto write their L2 forms+ For example, participants were required to write thetranslations ~shown in parentheses! of ~“bubble”!, ~“gasoline”!,and ~“bruise”! on a blank line that appeared next to the L1 cue+ All ofthe responses on this test were scored at two levels of sensitivity+ In thesensitive scoring system, words with spelling errors were marked as correctif the overall shape of the response was a close approximation of the targetword+ For example, for the target response bubble, misspellings such as bubbl,buble, bubel, and bubl were acceptable responses+ However, similar spellingsthat were real words such as babble and bobble would have been marked asincorrect because it could not be certain that the participants had intendedto write the target word+ In the strict scoring system, responses were onlymarked as correct if the target words were spelled correctly+ Responses inthe wrong grammatical form were marked as correct for both scoring meth-ods+ There were two reasons for this+ First, it seemed unlikely that partici-pants who responded with leaves and burning instead of the target wordsleaf and burn did not know those target words+ Second, the translation testswere essentially tests of meaning and form+ Although it might be possible toscore responses for grammatical form, such scoring might not give an accu-rate assessment of grammatical knowledge+

Despite pilot testing to attempt to eliminate L1 meanings that elicited mul-tiple semantically correct responses, a small number of target meanings elic-ited varied responses, all of which were correct L2 translations+ Forty-nineresponses on the productive tests ~0+66%! were scored as correct but werenot the intended target words+ Typically, these responses were less frequentsynonyms+ In such cases, the responses were marked as correct because learn-ers are more likely to know more frequent synonyms than less frequent syn-onyms+ Therefore, if a less frequent synonym was written as a response, itwas likely that the testee also knew the more frequent synonym+ Examples ofsemantically similar responses marked as correct were embrace instead ofthe target word hug, mature for ripe, steps for stairs, conceal for hide, and dis-

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like for hate+ One response, horn, which was not semantically related to theintended target response, corner, was also marked as correct because the tar-get word was polysemous, and horn was a less frequent meaning+ Becausethe number of semantically similar responses was extremely small ~0+66%!, itwas unlikely to have affected the results+

Procedure

The tests were administered in a 90-min class session+ Participants received athree-page test booklet and were given as much time as they needed to com-plete the tests+ The receptive and productive tests for each frequency levelwere presented on one page+ Participants received the most frequent L2 wordsand L1 meanings on the first page and the least frequent words and meaningson the third page+

Two versions of the test booklet were prepared to ensure that there wouldnot be a learning effect from seeing the same words in both the receptive andproductive tests+ The 90 L2 target words in version A of the receptive testappeared as the 90 L1 meanings in version B of the productive test+ Similarly,the 90 L1 meanings in version A of the productive test appeared as the 90 L2target words presented in version B of the receptive test+ Half of the partici-pants were randomly chosen to do version A, and the other half of the par-ticipants completed version B+ The research design allowed all of the wordsto be tested receptively and productively and ensured that there was not alearning effect from one test to the other+

Two scores were calculated for each test at each level of frequency for allof the participants+ One score was for partial knowledge of written form andone score was for full knowledge of written form+ Using scores for partial andfull knowledge of written form might provide a better indication of the learn-ers’ vocabulary size+

RESULTS

The descriptive statistics ~means and standard deviations! and the ratio ofproductive to receptive vocabulary on the receptive and productive transla-tion tests are reported in Table 1+ Receptive scores were higher than produc-tive scores using both the sensitive and strict scoring methods+ The ratio ofproductive to receptive knowledge was much greater using sensitive scoring~93%! than strict scoring ~77%!, which indicates that the participants mighthave partial productive knowledge of L2 forms for almost all of the wordsknown receptively, but that they did not possess full knowledge of meaningand form for nearly as many words productively as they did receptively+ Fig-ures 1 and 2 illustrate the differences between receptive and productive sizeswhen scoring for partial knowledge ~sensitive scoring! and fuller knowledge~strict scoring!+ To determine whether there were any overall differencesbetween the receptive and productive vocabulary scores, repeated measures


ANOVAs were performed using the total scores on the receptive and produc-tive measures+ The independent variable was the type of knowledge: recep-tive and productive+

In response to the first research question, the results indicate that recep-tive vocabulary size is larger than productive vocabulary size+ Receptive scoreswere found to be significantly higher than productive scores using sensitivescoring, F~1, 82! � 42+14, p , +001, and strict scoring, F~1, 82! � 194+67, p ,+001+ A repeated measures ANOVA also revealed that the version of the test ~Aor B! had a significant effect on scoring, F~1, 81! � 64+71, p , +001+ Partici-pants had greater knowledge of meaning and form for the target words pre-sented on the productive test of version A and the receptive test of version Bthan for the target words presented on the productive test of version B andthe receptive test of version A+ This would not, however, affect the results,because the study used a within-subjects design rather than a between-subjectsdesign+

The second research question focused on the relationship between recep-tive and productive vocabulary sizes at different word frequencies+ The scoreson the receptive and productive translation tests at each word frequency bandare presented in Table 2+ Table 2 shows that receptive scores were higher at

Table 1. Means, standard deviations, and ratios for thetotal receptive and productive scores

Receptive Productive

Scoring M SD M SD P0R ratio

Sensitive 73+52 5+64 68+69 7+18 93%Strict 73+18 5+75 56+31 8+88 77%

Note+ Maximum score � 90; n � 83+

Figure 1. Receptive and productive scores at each frequency band using thestrict scoring method+

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each frequency band+ Repeated measures ANOVAs revealed that receptivescores were higher than productive scores when scoring for partial knowl-edge at word band 1, F~1, 82! � 30+59, p , +001, word band 2, F~1, 82! � 38+92,p , +001, and word band 3, F~1, 82!� 7+32, p , +01+ Receptive scores were alsosignificantly higher at word band 1, F~1, 82! � 105+97, p , +001, word band 2,F~1, 82!� 244+21, p , +001, and word band 3, F~1, 82!� 206+26, p , +001, usingstrict scoring+ Additionally, Table 2 shows that the productive-receptive ratioremained fairly consistent at each frequency band when scoring for partialknowledge+ However, with strict scoring, the ratio of productive to receptivescores decreased as the word frequency decreased+

The third research question focused on the relationship between receptiveand productive vocabulary sizes for learners with different receptive vocabu-

Figure 2. Receptive and productive scores at each frequency band using thesensitive scoring method+

Table 2. Means, standard deviations, and ratios for thereceptive and productive scores at the different wordfrequency bands for the participants

Word band 1 Word band 2 Word band 3

Scoring M SD M SD M SD

SensitiveReceptive 28+67 1+57 26+12 2+06 18+72 3+62Productive 27+27 1+68 23+87 3+33 17+55 3+75Ratio 95% 91% 94%

StrictReceptive 28+43 1+59 26+08 2+07 18+66 3+62Productive 25+11 2+55 19+16 4+15 12+05 4+14Ratio 88% 73% 65%

Note+ Maximum score � 30; n � 83+ Word band 1 refers to the 701st to 1,900th mostfrequent words, word band 2 refers to the 1,901st to 3,400th most frequent words, andword band 3 refers to the 3,401st to 6,600th most frequent words in English+


lary scores+ Table 3 presents the data for the receptive and productive trans-lation tests at each word frequency band for the participants with the highestand lowest scores when scoring for partial knowledge+ Repeated measuresANOVAs did not find any effects for the type of knowledge at word band 1,F~1, 24!� 2+79, p � +108, word band 2, F~1, 24!� 0+92, p � +346, or word band 3,F~1, 24! � 3+24, p � +085, for the upper level participants+ Receptive scoreswere significantly higher for the lower level group at word band 1, F~1, 24! �15+70, p , +001, and word band 2, F~1, 24! � 22+23, p , +001+ There was nodifference between scores at word band 3, F~1, 24! � 0+61, p � +444+

Table 4 shows the scores on the receptive and productive tests at eachword frequency band for the participants with the highest and lowest scoresusing strict scoring+ Repeated measures ANOVAs revealed significant differ-ences for the upper level group at word band 1, F~1, 24! � 16+59, p , +001,word band 2, F~1, 24!� 38+41, p , +001, and word band 3, F~1, 24!� 38+55, p ,+001+ Receptive scores were significantly higher for the lower level group atword band 1, F~1, 24! � 46+46, p , +001, word band 2, F~1, 24! � 217+88, p ,+001, and word band 3, F~1, 24! � 55+35, p , +001+

DISCUSSION

The first question investigated total receptive and productive vocabulary sizes+The results support previous findings ~Fan, 2000; Laufer, 1998; Laufer & Pari-bakht, 1998; Morgan & Oberdeck, 1930; Waring, 1997a! as well as the commonperception among researchers ~Aitchison, 1994; Channell, 1988; Crow, 1986!that a learner’s receptive vocabulary is larger than his or her productive

Table 3. Means, standard deviations, and ratios for theparticipants with the highest and lowest receptive andproductive scores at the different word frequency bands usingsensitive scoring



Upper group ~n � 25!Receptive 29+16 0+99 27+52 1+56 22+24 2+45Productive 28+48 1+39 27+12 1+51 20+80 3+01Ratio 98% 99% 94%

Lower group ~n � 25!Receptive 28+16 1+55 24+36 1+80 15+28 2+72Productive 26+32 1+65 21+24 2+65 14+68 2+70Ratio 93% 87% 96%

Note+ Maximum score � 30+ Word band 1 refers to the 701st to 1,900th most frequent words,word band 2 refers to the 1,901st to 3,400th most frequent words, and word band 3 refers tothe 3,401st to 6,600th most frequent words in English+

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vocabulary+ The experimental design expanded upon earlier methodologiesby using equivalent receptive and productive test formats with different tar-get words to provide a more accurate measurement of the relationship betweenreceptive and productive vocabulary knowledge+When responses were scoredfor partial knowledge, the difference between receptive and productive vocab-ulary sizes was quite small; the ratio of productive to receptive knowledgewas 93%+ When using strict scoring, the difference between vocabulary sizeswas greater; the ratio was 77%+ Although the results of the present study indi-cate that the ratio of productive to receptive knowledge was almost equalwhen scoring for partial knowledge, this was probably slightly misleadingbecause the tests only measured knowledge of meaning and form+ The gapbetween receptive and productive knowledge might have been higher if otheraspects of word knowledge, such as collocation or syntax, had also been mea-sured+ However, it might also be possible that the receptive and productivevocabulary sizes of EFL and English as a second language ~ESL! learners aredifferent+ The results of this study indicate that there might only be a smalldifference between the receptive and productive vocabulary sizes of EFL learn-ers+ However, the difference might be larger for ESL learners+ EFL learners arelikely to learn more words through explicit instruction than are ESL learners~Laufer & Paribakht!+ Explicit vocabulary learning might lead to deeper knowl-edge of meaning and greater gains in productive knowledge than might typi-cally occur with incidental vocabulary learning+ Because most L1 words arelearned receptively through reading or listening ~Jenkins, Stein, & Wysocki,1984; Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987; Nagy & Herman, 1987; Nagy, Herman,& Anderson, 1985! and receptive learning leads to greater gains in receptiveknowledge than productive knowledge ~Griffin & Harley, 1996; Mondria &

Table 4. Means, standard deviations, and ratios for theparticipants with highest and lowest receptive and productivescores at the different word frequency bands using strictscoring



Upper group ~n � 25!Receptive 29+04 0+93 27+48 1+58 22+20 2+42Productive 27+08 1+87 23+52 2+43 16+68 3+04Ratio 93% 86% 75%

Lower group ~n � 25!Receptive 27+88 1+54 24+36 1+80 15+20 2+68Productive 23+48 2+95 15+92 2+22 8+80 2+60Ratio 84% 65% 58%

Note+ Maximum score � 30+ Word band 1 refers to the 701st to 1,900th most frequent words,word band 2 refers to the 1,901st to 3,400th most frequent words, and word band 3 refers tothe 3,401st to 6,600th most frequent words in English+


Wiersma, 2004; Stoddard, 1929; Waring, 1997b!, the difference between pro-ductive and receptive vocabulary sizes is also likely to be much larger for L1learners+ Another reason that the difference between receptive and produc-tive vocabularies might be relatively small for the EFL learners in thisstudy is that Japanese learners often use rote learning strategies to learn newwords ~Schmitt, 1997; Tinkham, 1989!+ The similarity between the method oflearning and testing might have a positive effect on scores ~Griffin, 1992!+Because research suggests that receptive learning is more likely to lead tolarger gains in receptive knowledge than productive knowledge, whereas pro-ductive learning is more effective in increasing productive knowledge ~Griffin& Harley; Mondria & Wiersma; Stoddard; Waring!, the results suggest thatvocabulary instruction in Japan might offer a more balanced approach to learn-ing vocabulary+

The second question investigated the relationship between receptive andproductive vocabulary sizes at different levels of frequency+ The resultsshowed that both receptive and productive scores decreased as word fre-quency decreased regardless of the method used to score the responses ~strictor sensitive!, and the difference between productive and receptive vocabu-lary size increased as frequency decreased when the responses were scoredstrictly+ The ratio was 88% at the most frequent word band ~word band 1!,73% at the next frequency band ~word band 2!, and 65% at the lowest fre-quency band ~word band 3!+ This result gives support to the common assump-tion that receptive knowledge precedes productive knowledge ~Aitchison, 1994;Channell, 1988; Melka, 1997!+ Although this assumption seems logical, it mightnot be entirely correct+ Learners might often gain productive knowledge ofsome aspects of vocabulary knowledge before they gain some aspects of recep-tive knowledge+ Advanced learners are likely to gain productive knowledgeof form and partial productive knowledge of grammatical functions from see-ing or hearing the form of an unknown word+ This might occur before theygain receptive knowledge of its meaning+ Research that has examined inci-dental vocabulary learning has shown that learners gain very little receptiveknowledge of meaning from one encounter with a word in context ~Horst,Cobb, & Meara, 1998; Hulstijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996; Webb, 2007!,and Beck, McKeown, and McCaslin ~1983! suggested that learners are unlikelyto gain any knowledge of meaning from one presentation of a word in anuninformative context+ For example, from the sentence Their request for extra-dition was denied, learners who have never encountered the word extraditionare likely to gain little receptive knowledge of meaning but might be ablewrite or pronounce extradition correctly based on their knowledge of the rulesof spelling+ They are also likely to learn that extradition is a noun, because ofits suffix, and that it is something that can be asked for because of the con-text in which it appeared+ Another example would be when a person hasattempted to use a word without fully understanding it+ Although the out-come might have been funny or embarrassing, that person might still havebeen able to demonstrate types of productive knowledge such as form, col-location, and grammatical functions+ Many L2 teachers will be able to give

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examples of learners demonstrating productive knowledge of meaning beforethey have gained receptive knowledge of grammatical functions+ These argu-ments suggest that some aspects of productive knowledge might be gainedbefore some aspects of receptive knowledge+ However, because knowing aword has traditionally been defined as knowing its meaning, it might be moreaccurate to restate the above assumption as follows: Receptive knowledge ofmeaning precedes productive knowledge of meaning+ However, in terms ofoverall vocabulary size, there can be little doubt from the results of this studyand earlier studies that learners are likely to have receptive knowledge ofmore words than they have productive knowledge of+

When responses were scored for partial knowledge, there was little differ-ence between vocabulary sizes at each frequency band+ At word band 1, theratio was 95%; at word band 2, the ratio was 91%; at word band 3, the ratiowas 94%+ This suggests that although it might have been easier for the par-ticipants to demonstrate receptive knowledge than productive knowledge, theydid have partial productive knowledge of almost the same number of wordsthat they had partial receptive knowledge of+ The reason for this was thatthere was almost no change between the strict and sensitive scores for recep-tive knowledge, because the participants made very few orthographic errorsin their L1+ However, the scores increased at all frequency bands on the pro-ductive test when the responses were scored for partial knowledge becausethere were more L2 spelling mistakes+

The third research question investigated the relationship between recep-tive and productive vocabulary sizes for learners with different receptivevocabulary scores+ To determine whether the relationship between receptiveand productive vocabularies varied for learners, the 25 participants with thehighest receptive vocabulary scores and the 25 participants with the lowestreceptive vocabulary scores were divided into two levels: upper and lower+The results showed that scores on the tests at each frequency band decreasedas word frequency decreased with both methods of scoring+ When responseswere scored to allow for partial knowledge, the results were similar for bothgroups+ The difference between productive and receptive vocabulary sizes wasvery small at all frequency bands, ranging from a ratio of productive to recep-tive knowledge of 94–99% for the upper level group and 87–96% for the lowerlevel group+ However, when responses were scored strictly, results showedthat the difference between vocabulary sizes increased at each word band forboth groups, with the difference being greater for the lower level participantsat each level+ The upper level group had a ratio of 93% for word band 1, 86%for word band 2, and 75% for word band 3+ The lower level group had a ratioof 84% for word band 1, 65% for word band 2, and 58% for word band 3+ Thefindings indicate that receptive vocabulary size might give some indication ofproductive vocabulary size+ Learners who have a larger receptive vocabularyare likely to know more of those words productively than learners who havea smaller receptive vocabulary+ Although the result is not surprising, it wouldbe useful to determine if there is a point at which scores on a receptive vocab-ulary test such as the Vocabulary Levels Test ~Nation, 1983, 1990; Schmitt,


Schmitt, & Clapham, 2001! or the Eurocentres Vocabulary Size Test ~Meara &Jones, 1990! could indicate a learner’s productive vocabulary+

The results also indicate that regardless of receptive vocabulary size, theparticipants had partial productive knowledge of almost all of the words thatthey knew receptively, but as word frequency decreased, they were unable todemonstrate productive knowledge to the same degree as receptive knowl-edge+ Participants with higher receptive vocabulary scores had greater abil-ity at demonstrating productive knowledge of L2 forms than those with lowerreceptive scores+

It is interesting to note that scores were occasionally higher on a learner’sproductive test than on his or her receptive test at the same frequency band+This contrasts with Waring’s ~1997a! study, in which he found that all of theparticipants had higher scores on the receptive tests at every word frequencylevel+ This might have occurred because the learners were tested for differentreceptive and productive words+ However, there are two other reasons why Jap-anese learners might score highly on a productive test of meaning and form+First, Japanese has a large number of loan words+ Learners might gain produc-tive knowledge of orthography from the L1 form of those words+ Whereas itmight be assumed that the reverse would also be true—learners gaining recep-tive knowledge of meaning from the L2 form—this is not necessarily the case+For example, learners consistently demonstrated at least partial knowledge ofthe target word massage on the productive test when prompted with its L1 form

+ However, none of the learners was able to demonstrate receptiveknowledge of massage because they were either unsure of its meaning orbecause they mistook it for message+ Due to the fact that the L1 form of loanwords provides information about their L2 form, it might be relatively easy todemonstrate productive knowledge of form+ It might be more difficult to trans-late those words in the opposite direction because learners need to demon-strate a greater amount of knowledge—meaning as well as form+ Similarly,participants sometimes mistook the form of L2 words for which they were likelyto have had receptive knowledge, such as week for weak, send for sand, andbaton for button+ This did not occur in the opposite direction ~L1 to L2!+

The test format in this study—receptive and productive translations tests—differed from most recent studies that investigated the relationship betweenreceptive and productive vocabulary sizes using the Vocabulary Levels Testand the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test+ Because translation tests use anidentical format to test receptive and productive knowledge, they might pro-vide a more accurate measurement of vocabulary size+ However, there are twoproblems with using translation tests+ First, grading tests might be virtuallyimpossible in an ESL situation because learners are likely to have differentL1s+ Second, the target words on translation tests need to be chosen verycarefully and then extensively pilot-tested to ensure that the testees are likelyto respond to the target word+ These two weaknesses make the use of testssuch as the Vocabulary Levels Test and the Eurocentres Vocabulary Size Testbetter suited to determining receptive vocabulary size and the ProductiveVocabulary Levels Test more effective for measuring productive vocabulary

92 Stuart Webb

size+ However, researchers who need to make more accurate comparisonsshould explore further options and use tests with equivalent formats, such astranslation tests+

Although the results of the present study might confirm that learners’ recep-tive vocabulary size is larger than their productive vocabulary size, it is likelythat this relationship varies from group to group+ Laufer and Paribakht ~1998!found that the gap between receptive and productive vocabularies was smallerfor EFL students than ESL students and suggested that this is because of learn-ing differences+ EFL learners are more likely to learn words through direct meth-ods, making more of an effort to learn a new word and, as a result, gainingmore productive knowledge than ESL learners, who might learn more wordsindirectly+ Vocabulary instruction and the proficiency level of students are twofactors that are likely to have a substantial effect on vocabulary size+ Furtherresearch to investigate the relationship between receptive and productivevocabularies for different types of learners would be a useful follow-up to thisstudy+ In particular, examining how different methods of instruction affectvocabulary size would be of benefit to teachers and students+

~Received 3 June 2007!

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215–229+

APPENDIX

Word band 1701st–1,900th

most frequent words

Word band 21,901st–3,400th

most frequent words

Word band 33,401st–6,600th

most frequent words

island medicine foganimal pocket gluesport palace socksaddress hero bruiseearth beer gymairport winter hobbydoctor ear swearcheap kiss cheekMonday hate owlweak sky hammer

94 Stuart Webb

safe button divefinger belt funeralwine hide bubblefarm singer thunderdeep roof spoongun cow hugteach wash olivescientist sand tentrain vegetable linensing sweet laddersoft grass mathematicschair pilot ceilingnewspaper snow gasolinequeen bone ripesecret moon pillowcold relative discomachine salt recipeticket leaf porkmagazine pink translateclothes protein butterflyThursday pregnant strangerbird ambassador calendarsleep pollution stairshole joke carpetbridge jockey collarfruit fence cerealbottle mask hungrydream ceremony kidnapkey castle spicewarm kilometer junglehotel bowl strawberryburn milk tomatopopulation boil sourcount birthday rainbowscience mirror wigpromise stomach handsomeweather boots shallowspring yellow umbrellacamera license verticalbox spray nestFebruary jewel trumpetwear actor lilywind toy lazycorner tower zooweekend twins slavekitchen steal massagevideo whisper miracleking neighbor candletomorrow jazz liontrain drum liquid


receptive and productive vocabulary sizes of l2 learners

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